Awkward
by Sekana Katayama
Summary: Sequel to 'Romantic'... What happened later that cold, cold night in Flanoir...? No lemon yet, sorry folks.


Hello again! Yep, I got sick again, and I got another RichterEmil idea (funny how that happens…). This one is a sequel to 'Romantic,' so please read it first. It's worth it, I promise!

There's actually be some yaoi in this one, so if you don't like, don't read. Or read, and be converted! Nyahahaha!

Written from 11:19 pm to 1:45 am.

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**Awkward**

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Sometime later in the night, just when Emil was beginning to feel drowsy despite the Richter-proximity, his blissful passage into sleep was interrupted by Richter's shift in position. What was he doing? Emil wouldn't have been bothered normally, since he was on the verge of unconsciousness as it was, but this was exceedingly strange. Richter had rolled over so that he was now facing Emil's back. No longer were they merely back-to-back – a nice, safe, completely platonic method of sleeping – no, now Emil could feel Richter's even breaths on the back of his neck as his friend's chest rose and fell.

"R-Richter?" Emil asked cautiously, in a quiet voice so as not to wake the other is he was too deep into sleep.

A slight change in breathing pattern and a soft, waking sigh indicated Richter's return to the conscious world, obviously irritated upon reentry. "What is it?"

Emil hadn't really thought through what he wanted to say, so he mistakenly let his wayward thoughts slip out through his mouth like the water of a babbling stream. "I-I don't l-like having, um, someone, u-um, at my b-back. C-could you maybe t-turn around? I'm sorr-"

"Shut up," Richter growled, even more annoyed now that something was being demanded of him that seemed completely frivolous.

Emil froze at the harshness of his friend's refusal, but had very little time to sink into a trembling wreck, for the next moment a pair of strong arms forcefully turned him around to face a half-conscious Richter, who blinked a few times as if to clear his mind before drawing Emil close.

Emil very carefully did not comment on this action, as he _had _told Richter he didn't like having someone at his back, and this position obviously didn't include that, so it was possible that his friend had only been trying to comply with his request. But despite that… it was an extremely awkward position. Warm, yes, because their bodies were pressed together in a somewhat pleasing way, at least physically. But the disadvantage was that being so close to Richter, being _held _by him like this, was completely and utterly embarrassing, and mostly his own fault for being a wimp who couldn't stand the cold.

They might have succeeded in ignoring the strangeness if it wasn't for the fact that Emil was mistakenly wearing a girl's nightgown instead of the somewhat-manly button-down nightshirt and flannel pants that Richter had been given. Unfortunately, Emil _was _wearing a nightgown, and, as Richter had pointed out earlier, it had ruffles on it. And ribbons. And Richter could simply not ignore the feel of ruffles and ribbons pressing against him, even though his nightshirt should have blocked out most of the sensation.

All at once, it was too much for him, and he could stay silent no longer. He probably should have explained the way the ruffles and ribbons were beginning to loosen the hinges on his sanity, since they gave the added effect of making him feel as if he was embracing a girl, instead of a male companion – albeit Emil, who wasn't exactly the stereotypical male – which made things very awkward indeed. But Richter, of course, spoke only what he had to, and neglected to make his reasoning clear.

"Emil, what are you wearing under that?" No, there were no sultry tones here, but Richter's voice alone turned the phrase into something less-than-innocent, even to Emil's naive ears.

"W-what!?" The blonde squeaked, flushing in the fortunate darkness that mostly obscured his stunned expression.

"I asked you a question." Richter stated, disinterested in Emil's confusion at the expense of his friend's well-being.

Emil tried his best to calm himself, repeating in his mind that Richter would never think about things in _that _way, and he really shouldn't be jumping to conclusions. "U-um, shorts…?"

"Are you positive about that?" Richter asked wryly, and yet without any sense of humor whatsoever seeing as the nightgown was still there, still very much creeping him out.

"Y-yes." Emil answered hastily, mind still racing, despite his attempted comforting, to figure out just why Richter cared what he was wearing under the nightgown. I mean, there was no way Richter wanted to wear the nightgown, so then why…?

"Take it off." Richter demanded suddenly, tugging at a ribbon on the shoulder to make it clear which item of clothing he was referring to.

"Wha... what?" Emil's face turned a lovely shade of dark rose as he tried desperately to grasp Richter's logic, or at least his motives.

"I can't stand all those… ruffles." Richter said with distaste, mentally adding 'and ribbons' but figuring that saying that aloud would be too much. "Just take it off, since you're decent underneath it."

Emil panicked at the thought of being half-naked and in the arms of his friend/enemy, whichever it was at the moment. "B-but I'll be c-c-cold!"

Richter's hands went to the button at the neck of his nightgown, and Emil, flustered, could only resist uselessly by twisting around and trying to get out of the other's hold, but only succeeding in making Richter's task that much more difficult. Eventually, Richter ended up pinning him down with a hand square on his chest, and attempting the buttons with his free hand, but even that wasn't working that well.

"I told you to take it off!" Richter growled at him, now thoroughly pissed. "Hold still!"

Emil heard the tell-tale fury in his friend's voice, and sensed that this was the point where he couldn't defy Richter any longer, or else face his true wrath. "S-sorry…"

He managed to challenge his own flight reflex and tried to relax and let Richter undo the third button, already almost halfway down the nightgown, but he still couldn't stop the fiery blush he could feel burning his face. Richter… was undressing him. Not for _that _purpose, but his poor teenage hormones couldn't tell the difference.

Richter noticed the obvious surrender, and became immediately more gentle, taking the steadying hand off Emil and using both hands to more carefully undo the buttons, being kind enough to not touch Emil more than necessary.

"If you get cold, I'll let you wear my shirt." Richter muttered without warmth, but it was an attempt at a caring gesture, and that was good enough to distract Emil from the fact that his friend was slipping the nightgown from his suddenly-cold shoulders.

"O-okay. S-sorry." He tried not to notice the way Richter calmly focused on the task at hand, removing the offensive piece of clothing and tossing it from the bed with an unchanging expression of slight annoyance.

"Come here." Richter beckoned in an all-too-casual way.

Emil swallowed his pride abashedly, and slid closer to Richter, where he was once again pulled into a warmth-providing embrace. Richter didn't seem to notice or care that his friend was now all skin from the waist up, but Emil could feel everything much more acutely now, like Richter's impressive musculature, which was now protected by only one layer of material. It wasn't enough.

* * *

Emil had tried his best to fall asleep, but now that he was mostly unclothed, it just wasn't going to happen. If only Richter had been a woman… wait, no, that would have made it worse! It was so late into the night – or perhaps into the morning – that his stray thoughts were becoming jumbled and illogical. Which was also making him feel very awkward due to an inexplicable urge to reach out and touch Richter's beautiful, silky red-pink hair.

Richter, ever the untroubled one, had already fallen asleep a while ago, and his sleeping face, devoid of all cares, was so intensely captivating that Emil had been staring at it for quite some time, trying to resist the urge to lean in close to see the slight curve of his lips, which sometimes appeared to be almost smiling, or the long, graceful eyelashes at the ends of his peacefully closed eyes. And Emil had the strangest urge of all – to reach out and touch the smooth, ever-serious face that belonged to someone so powerful, so temperamental, and yet so often kind…

He did it. Before he even thought about it, he had already done it.

Richter's hair _was _as silky to the touch as it looked, so pleasant under his questing hands. And his face was just as smooth as he had imagined, as his fingers brushed over cheekbones and down to his jaw, before, with a shock of realization at what he was doing, he took his hands away and wrung them guiltily behind his back, sheepish blush on his cheeks by the feel of it.

Richter didn't give any sign of consciousness, though, and that was an unfortunate fuel to Emil's curiosity. Just… once more. He surely wouldn't wake up, since he hadn't the first time.

Despite his inner misgivings, Emil reached out and cautiously stroked the waves of red that cascaded over Richter's shoulder, and then, feeling even bolder, lightly touched the half-smiling lips with the pad of his thumb, almost by mistake as his hand slid over a soft cheek.

Richter's eyes opened slowly, but he was still in time to catch Emil's little adventure, the hands that immediately removed themselves to be stuck behind the blonde's back, and the odd sensations that meant someone had been touching his face while he was unconscious.

"What were you doing?" He was not in one of his furious moods, not yet, but his narrowed eyes said that there had better be a good answer for this discovery. He seized one of the offending hands from behind Emil and examined it as if he would find the answer there.

"N-nothing!" Emil countered hastily, coloring in contrast to his attempted denial. "I, um, w-well, I…"

"Emil," Richter said his name, as usual, with that deep, velvet tone that sent ice down his spine. "How would you feel if you woke up to someone doing that to you?"

Emil could only open and close his mouth like a freshly-caught fish, nothing really to excuse his inexcusable curiosity.

Richter frowned. "Close your eyes."

Emil complied without wondering why he was obeying, only knowing that he didn't want to make Richter angry again, and feeling ashamed for having touched Richter without asking him, as if he ever would have asked to do something so stupid, so awkward.

In the darkness behind his eyes, Emil felt and heard everything with that much more clarity, disturbing in its intensity.

Richter's voice came through the blackness. "How do you think you would feel… if someone…stroked your hair –"

A hand stroked through his hair and Emil jumped a little but managed to keep his eyes closed.

" –caressed your face –"

A slightly-calloused hand brushed across Emil's cheek to his chin, lingering to sample his lips in a way that made him have to bite his tongue and squeeze his eyes shut not to break the blackness of his closed eyes.

" –and you opened your eyes to see them staring at you like this," Richter's hand was still stroking through his hair as Emil took the cue and hesitantly opened his eyes.

Richter's expression froze him, and coupled with the pleasurable sensation of the fingers running through his hair overloaded him for a moment as his heart skipped a couple beats. His mouth fell open stupidly as he took in Richter's intense green eyes gazing directly into his, making him feel at once guilty for his own blunders and yet ensnared in something he couldn't even comprehend.

"What does it look like I'm trying to do?" Richter asked him this final question, by its matter-of-fact tone a sort of resounding point as to why Emil should never, ever, ever touch him while he was sleeping again. And he clearly expected a concise answer, by his driving eyes.

"T-that's, um, well…" Emil tripped over the sentence, of which there wasn't one, since he had no idea what to say. What _had _he been doing when he Richter had woke? More importantly, as Richter was asking, what had it _appeared _to be? "I-I don't know…?"

Richter sighed in very apparent frustration, and let go of Emil, both with his hands, and his eyes. "I could give you a clearer hint, but I doubt you'd like it. Or who knows, maybe you would, but that's no business of mine."

Emil hadn't really caught on to Richter's meaning, so he was left still puzzled over Richter's last question, which he hadn't been able to answer. "R-Richter?"

"_Yes?_" Richter sounded and looked irritated again, which was only a small step or two from fury. Emil had to be as careful as possible not to wake the angry demon.

"What did, um, _y-you _think it looked like I was t-trying to d-"

"Kiss me." Richter stated in his difficult-to-interpret tone of seriousness.

"W-what!?" Emil wasn't at all sure of the multiple emotions running through him, nor at the command he had just sworn he'd heard. Had Richter just asked him to… to kiss him?

Richter sighed, irritation level rising. "Emil, that wasn't a-"

Emil knew, by the usual pattern of things, that the next word would be 'question.' Richter always said that when he wanted Emil not to question something, especially when he was instructing him to do something.

"I-I… well… o-okay." Emil tried to steel himself for the inevitable, and told his various jittery nerves and pounding heartbeats to settle themselves as he leaned in towards Richter, desperately trying to keep his composure and failing.

He was very, very close, their lips only a breath's away from touching, when he felt a hand stop him like a stone wall square against his chest.

"What are you doing!?" Richter asked incredulously, in a clearer show of confusion than Emil had ever chanced to see before.

Emil, doubly confused now, replied, "I-I thought you told me to k-k-kiss… you…?"

"I was answering your question!" Richter snapped, seeming, if possible, much more affected by the misunderstanding than he should have been. "I wasn't asking you anything!"

Emil winced at the wave of fury washing over him, especially strong because he was still so very close to Richter, and could feel his anger radiating off the much-stronger body like heat on a sweltering day. "I'm… I'm sorry!"

The anger abruptly dissipated, and Emil opened his eyes cautiously to see they were still unbearably close, but Richter's expression had faded to a lesser annoyance that was even now becoming curiosity. Emil didn't like to think that Richter was curious about something, since curiosity was what had gotten him into the awkwardness in the first place, but there it was.

"You… were going to do that just because I told you to?" Richter seemed to be thinking aloud more than addressing him, for he said it with a sort of wry amusement meant more for his own ears.

But it was the fact Richter was pointing out that made Emil blush all over again, realizing how stupid he had been. Richter hadn't even asked more than once – not even once, since Emil had misinterpreted things – and Emil had spared no time in fulfilling his demand, though it had been altogether a shocking and unacceptable request.

"So if I told you to do something, you'd do it without asking for a reason?" Richter persisted, now in a much better mood now that he had a new way to tease Emil for his naivety, which seemed to be his pastime of choice.

"W-well I didn't want to… to make you a-angry," Emil whispered, ashamed of how much Richter meant to him, about the feeling of wanting to please his friend so much that he couldn't bear the disappointed looks he often received for his stupidity.

"Kiss me."

"I w-wasn't asking you a question!" Emil stuttered, flustered again by the abrupt words that sounded, coming from Richter, like a demand and not an answer.

"And that wasn't an answer to a question, Emil." Richter replied coolly, arched eyebrow showing that he had expected his friend/enemy to catch on faster. As if Emil ever caught onto a new idea quickly.

"W-well then, w-why did you – oh." Emil's world flipped and suddenly he felt upside-down, and topsy-turvy and disoriented and why was everything so confusing suddenly!? Was Richter actually asking him this time? Was he serious? Wasn't Richter always serious? "Oh."

"Yes, Emil. That was a demand." Richter stated dryly, eyes showing some small mirth at Emil's expense.

Emil considered the situation with what was left of his sleep-starved, shocked, fried, frozen, thawed, and electrified brain, and concluded that Richter was going to be very displeased with him if he did not obey. "Oh. O-okay."

He didn't have to move much closer than they already were, for Richter had never pulled away from when Emil had tried to 'obey' his wishes that last time. But it was the tiny, insignificant distance that impeded his way with more tenacity than a four-foot distance between them would have.

He felt Richter watching him intently as he very carefully avoided his eyes, focusing instead on the lips so close to his own, the target of his current task. He had to. He just had to. If he didn't do this, it would be even more awkward. His palms grew cold and damp with some kind of apprehension while his face insisted on maintaining its humiliating warmth, and his heartbeats continued to beat out of sync and unpredictably against the walls of his chest.

He felt a change in Richter's gaze, somehow, right before their lips touched, as if his friend hadn't really believed he would do it up until that moment. Emil tentatively pressed his mouth to Richter's, the shock of the sensation numbing him for a moment as he tried to convince himself that this was some kind of twisted dream. He withdrew as soon as he could, having done little more than bring their mouths together for one brief moment.

"You _did_ it." Richter sounded completely amazed, and Emil felt a rush of excitement fill him at the fact that he had just astounded his semi-idol, though it didn't take long for the realization of what he had done to catch up with him.

"W-well… you t-told me to…" But the excuse sounded pathetic even to his ears, and he quickly leaned back, distancing himself from the awkwardness as best he could.

"Impressive." Richter's amused tone was back, but there was little curiosity left now that he had conducted his experiment. "So, if you could command me in some way, what would you have me do?"

No, not more curiosity! Emil squirmed at the thought of continuing with any sort of conversation at this point, after he had just… had just… he had kissed him! It was so very… unreal!

"Well?" Richter nudged him with his persuasive voice.

"G-give me back my nightgown?" Emil asked hopefully, but it was definitely more pleading than demanding.

"Anything but that," Richter countered with disgust, and muttered something about 'ruffles' and 'ribbons' under his breath.

Emil had an idea. An awful, terrible, very, very, very bad idea. And his cursed curiosity wasn't going to let him forget it until he had let it loose into the air. And, despite his inner sense telling him not to do it, the mangled remains of his common sense made no such protest.

He had to resist!

"There has to be something you can think of." Richter prodded tonelessly, beginning to get bored, but not intent on giving up when Emil seemed so stricken with embarrassment.

"W-well, I… no!" Emil shook his head quickly. "You could… no! I don't have any ideas."

"It sounds like you might have one," Richter's lips twitched upwards at the entirely obvious way in which Emil was attempting to disguise his request, whatever it was, due to some thought that it wouldn't be wise to ask.

"What? O-of course not. I, um, I… no." Emil, ridiculously flustered right about now, denied it further. "I don't have anything."

"Tell me." Richter demanded, though he had already used up his share of demands. "No matter how stupid you think it is."

Emil fidgeted a few moments longer before his mouth ran away with itself. "W-would you… would you kiss me?"

Richter almost laughed before he restrained his amusement to his eyes, and instead settled for remarking, "That doesn't sound like a demand."

Emil's blush darkened considerably as he murmured, "K-kiss me."

He told himself it was only to see if Richter would do it, just a small curiosity, to find out if Richter was a hypocrite. To find out if, were the shoe on the other foot, Richter would obey an awkward and embarrassing demand like Emil had before. Emil had tried to convince himself that these flimsy reasons were behind his humiliating demand, but all that vanished after he voiced the quiet command.

Richter immediately became serious again, the intensity in his bright green eyes startling as they caught his own. Emil was frozen in place as Richter reached out to brush some wayward blonde strands from his eyes as he leaned in, mouth falling open just enough to tempt Emil's into falling open in the same fashion. The hand lingered, and traced to Emil's chin, where it gave him control of Emil's face, tilting it into a better position. Emil lost his breath at the sultry gaze directed at him as Richter waited, as if purposefully, without capturing his lips. Emil almost expected him to say something, to tease him by going so close and then pulling away with some sort of logical excuse, but Richter did no such thing, only waited there to watch Emil's face play out a variety of expressions of surprise and want and fear.

And then, at last, came the low, quiet request. "Close your eyes."

Emil's breath hitched as his heartbeats sped up even more, but he wanted to see it. Something urged him onwards, told him he had to see the moment when their lips touched, to be able to remember the picture as more than darkness.

"N-no."

He had done it. He had refused something, denied Richter something he had demanded, as easily as that. And right now, though he should have felt the beginning threads of guilt weaving around his stomach, he felt justified in it. He didn't want to close his eyes, and a new boldness told him he didn't have to.

Richter gave him a rare half-smile. "That was what I wanted to hear."

And before the shock could set in that Richter, all this time, had wanted him to just act on his own feelings instead of trying to please him, he was interrupted by soft lips against his, a warm mouth sliding against his own as he gasped at the feelings it was generating. Richter's mouth crushed against his at first, stealing his breath and making him lightheaded somehow with the searing heat of the lips capturing his.

But then there was a change, a very clear change as Emil suddenly realized he couldn't help himself from closing his eyes to the sensations, and the surrender made Richter shift and take his mouth again, this time slowly, mouth soft against his as he caught Emil's bottom lip between his and kneaded it leisurely, causing Emil's mouth to fall open again as he let out a noise he hadn't meant to make.

Another muffled moan left him as Richter's mouth took his again, this time sliding in a moist tongue that found his unhurriedly. All thought left him as it stroked against his own, and he had to fight to keep breathing through his nose as he lost himself more and more in the kiss. The warmth spread to his face without warning as their tongues entwined within and Richter tilted his face to get better access, as Emil began to feel how his body was heating up beyond reason, and he was sure Richter could feel it through the single cloth layer separating their torsos.


End file.
